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Well, that was a quick hiatus for me, but deservedly-interrupted by the release today of the trailer for The Asylum's take on Alexandre Dumas' classic adventure tale 3 Musketeers. The film - written by Ed DeRuiter and directed by Cole S. McKay - looks to be AWESOME. I've said it more than once this year and no doubt I'll say it a couple times more, but Asylum features have gotten a serious upgrade, FX-wise, and I say that as someone who has always loved their FX. But this new stuff, especially the aerial FX and action sequences shown in this trailer are outstanding and totally do their job of getting me pumped for the film.

3 Musketeers stars Heather Hemmens, Xin, Alan Rachins, Keith Allan, Michelle Boyd and David Chokachi, and hits the streets in DVD form on the 25th of October.

...but as I'm going to be out of town through the end of the week, you'll have to entertain yourself with my posts past for the next few days (that is, of course, unless some major news breaks, like, say, set pics or an IMDB page revealing the cast and crew of 2 Headed Shark Attack or Amityville Haunting). But definitely come back next week, when things really start popping off: we got fiveAsylum films coming out in the next two months - Dragon Crusaders, A Haunting in Salem, 3 Musketeers, 11/11/11 and Born Bad - so there's gonna be plenty of set pics, trailers, posters, cast and crew profiles and even a few interviews to satiate your hunger for all things Asylum.

And expect hella hyping for A Haunting in Salem, my very first script - directed by the venerable Shane Van Dyke and performed by Bill Oberst Jr, Courtney Abbiati, Jenna Stone, NIcholas Harsin et al - before its DVD release on October 4th. Consider this week the calm before the storm; a very, very good storm.As for where I'll be, I'll only say it rhymes with Stas Megas. Follow me on Twitter for updates of my drunken and hopefully lucrative exploits. Have a good week, gang!

Jared Cohn, best known to Asylum fans as the writer/director of this year's thriller Born Bad, just saw his first foray behind the camera hit DVD for the very first time. The film is called The Carpenter Part One: And So They Die...

Dig the synopsis: "The Carpenter tells the tale of a writer, a group of high school kids and a killer. The Kids party, the writer writes and the killer becomes legend."

As if that wasn't enough to wet your whistle, dig the trailer, courtesy of You Tube:

Like what you see? You should. Now get on over to Create Spaceand snag yourself a copy before they're all gone. Then tune in this November where Cohn's most recent film, The Asylum's Born Bad gets its own DVD premiere.

Today marks Committed's first birthday: it was exactly one year ago today that I made my first post. Whatever I was striving for, whatever I was hoping this blog would accomplish, it pales in comparison to what it has actually wrought: at this moment I've written two produced scripts for my favorite movie studio, one of which is a shark movie, my dream genre.

I feel very fortunate, very blessed and very humbled at these events, and in no small way were these victories aided by the fine, fine folks who pop by on a regular basis. People like Slushie Man, Mr. Gable, C.H., Tysto, Brunez, BlUsKrEEm, all my beautiful and intelligent followers and even you snarky Anonymii - thanks for reading, for commenting, and for making me feel like I'm not writing in a vacuum.

And also, of course, a huge, huge, HUGE thanks to everyone at The Asylum who - despite my expectations of a cease & desist order - have been nothing but accommodating to my attempts to piggy-back on their success. Thanks for making great movies that keep getting better every go-round, and thanks for giving me a shot. For everything that made me start this blog, I've now got 100 times that motivation to keep it going.

So thank you, honestly, from the bottom of my coal-like heart, to anyone who reads this; thanks for the best, most important year of my life. And, as always, Viva La Asylum!!!

Been a while since I've done one of these posts, but my fellow faithfully-committed, loyal follower and a hell of an insightful guy in the realm of things B, Jeffrey Long, a.k.a. Slushie Man, shot me an email this morning with two stories that just can be passed up.

The first tidbit comes from ABC Action News and happened only yesterday. It involves a shark swimming the flooded streets of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Irene.

Interesting idea, real world. But is it as cool as a sinking atoll? And what if that shark there had two heads? Then you'd have a real movie. Oh wait...

Seriously, though, this is a rad little scenario (unless you were out for a walk) and a prime example of life imitating art. That's right, I said it and I'm sticking by it. Moving on!

This next bit is the one that really gives me the willies: in a housing tenement in Brooklyn, a dude pitchforked a giant rat the other day.

from BlackandBrownNews.com

Now, I'm not particularly afraid of rats, but I am particularly afraid of any creature that's much larger than it's supposed to be. Look at that fucking thing; it's the size of a housecat. And the guy that caught it said there were at least two others he'd seen of comparable size. So then what I'm envisioning here is a gritty urban creature feature in which the usual woes of tenement living are augmented by an infestation of mutant rats - no doubt escaped from a nearby lab, or perhaps mutating in the sewers since Three Mile Island - that can chew through solid concrete, and bone. Picture it a nouveau Food of the Gods. I see Donald Faison, Michael K. Williams and Bobb'e J. Thompson as the male leads, Zoe Saldana and Taryn Manning are the ladies, Eric Roberts is the rich developer who unleashes the rats on the tenements and Andy Serkis is the rats.

If this last one happens, Slushie Man, you get co-producer credit. Thanks for the heads up!

We're still waiting on the IMDB page for the film, including details on its massive cast, but in the meantime some kind soul has established a 2 Headed Shark Attack page over at my favorite research tool, Wikipedia. Not much new stuff over there, and what is - while very interesting, and in fact pleasing - can't be proven factual until The Asylum themselves present the details, but they're reliable enough to print here, a very unreliable and biased blog.

First up, there's mention of another cast member, a Mr. Geoff Ward, who, if I have the right guy, is a natural bodybuilder from south Florida who's appeared in quite a few things, most notable among them Bachelor Party 2 and and episode of "The Glades." No word on which character he's playing, but a good-looking, probably-ripped dude like this, I have an idea or two. But again, on the major details, I prefer to relate rather than break.

The other piece of interesting information gleaned from the Wikipedia page is that credit for the score is being given to Asylum-maestro Chris Ridenhour. I double-checked this with the man himself, and he confirmed, which in my book is excellent news. If you've ever seen an Asylum movie, you've head Ridenhour's work. Dude's composed the score for a whopping 32 films for our favorite studio, including pretty much everything in recent memory. He did the score for my first script, A Haunting in Salem, and though we're still awaiting the release of that one (10/4/2011), I've heard the track that plays over the closing credits and it is INCREDIBLE. Ridenhour has a real knack for augmenting the emotional impact of each scene he scores. When I heard that closing track, I felt like he understood the story and the characters maybe even better than I did. Guy's solid gold; expect a thrilling, sweeping, epic score.

And that's all there is for now, but with many major details left to reveal - including, like, a dozen more cast members - and my fervent, almost obsessive need to share any and all info on this with anyone who will listen and several who won't, rest assured the second it breaks, it'll be posted right here.

Couple of interesting news items pertaining to The Asylum today, this first bit coming from the fine folks at Adult Swim, who interviewed two of the three Asylum head honchos - Paul Bales and David RIMAWI (the third, of course, being David Michael Latt)- about what exactly it takes to make a mockbuster succeed. I get a lot of questions - and by a lot, I mean like half a dozen, I run in small circles - about how The Asylum works, and to date this is the best article out there, well, articulating it. And I can personally attest to the speed with which they work: both of the scripts I've written for them - A Haunting in Salem and 2 Headed Shark Attack - I composed first drafts in about five days. Don't let that stop you from believing in these scripts' utter awesomocity, by the way, in both instances they were an inspired five days. Anywho, take a look at the article, it might be the most thorough in-print interview with the studio higher-ups to date; and their enthusiasm is contagious.

Secondly, today SyFy announced their Fall programming schedule, including the air-date for The Asylum's next foray into the realm of the undead, Zombie Apocalypse, starring Ving Rhames (hell yeah!) and Taryn Manning (also hell yeah!): October 29th, two days before Halloween and the crown jewel in the network's "bloodcurdling programming" block for the month. SyFy exec Craig Engler co-wrote the script with Brooks Peck, and the film is being directed by Nick Lyon (Species: The Awakening). I'm super excited about this one, not only because of the stellar cast - which includes Lesley-Ann Brandt ("Spartacus"), Eddie Steeples ("My Name is Earl") and Gerald Webb ("Law & Order: L.A.," Battle of Los Angeles, 2012 Ice Age, A Haunting in Salem, 2 Headed Shark Attack) - but also because the story - rugged band of survivors fighting through an infested L.A. to a supposed sanctuary on Catalina - sounds kinda like a Zombie Judgment Night, which to me at least is kick-ass. Catch this one when it airs, or suffer the two-month wait until its DVD release December 27th.

As Summer starts turning towards Fall, we find ourselves currently in a relative desert of Asylum releases - Barely Legal came out almost a month ago, and there's still a little more than a month before Dragon Crusaders drops on DVD. It's an admitted first-world concern, but when you're used to get a movie a month from your favorite studio, any longer variation leaves you fiending for a fix. Right? Please?

Anywho, we're about to exit this desert for a vast oasis in which a flurry of Asylum films can be found. Behold, the rest of The Asylum's jam-packed 2011 schedule:

And as though all this wasn't enough, there's still the recently-revealed Amityville Haunting from director Geoff Meed in the works, possibly for a 2011 release but most likely 2012, and 2 Headed Shark Attack from director Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray, from a script by me, H. Perry Horton, from a story by Edward DeRuiter, which will be out on DVD January 17, 2012, starring Charlie O'Connell, Carmen Electra and Brooke Hogan.

So by my math, that's at least 6 Asylum films in the next four months, plus one ready to go when the new year rolls over. Get ready to be busy.

There's nothing I like more than a good (or bad) shark movie. They scare the crap out of me, always have, ever since the questionable parenting of my father plopped me down in front of Jaws when I was about seven. Thus was born a primal fear/obsession that has only grown as the decades have passed. I've since seen Jaws more than 100 times, and every other shark movie I could get my hands on at least twice. Awesome, okay, terrible, shitty - it doesn't matter, they had me at "shark." And so when I started thinking about The Asylum's 2 Headed Shark Attack - out 1/17/12 from director Christopher Ray, based on a story by Ed DeRuiter and a script by me and starring Carmen Electra, Charlie O'Connell and Brooke Hogan, whew! - being the latest entrant of this distinguished canon, I decided I wanted to see a comprehensive list of shark films. But there wasn't one. So I made one, chronological to boot. I should clarify: these are movies with sharks as the primary antagonist, not just any old movie in which a shark swims by. That said, if I've left anything out, let me know on the comments board and I'll rectify the error. Enjoy!

Shark! (1969)

directed by Sam Fullerwritten by Sam Fuller and John Kingsbridgestarring Burt Reynolds